Little Evidence Supports Trump’s Claims Against China on Tariffs and Trade

President Tramp lies. He lies knowing that there are core supporters who cannot tell the difference much less care. Herein lies the bigger problem.

I'm with Trump on this one. He should know because he buys Chinese steel for all his construction projects!

Third from last paragraph states “their massive trade deficit with the U.S. would mean that China imports more from the U.S. than it exports.” Seriously! Is this a misprint or a deliberate attempt to mislead or a complete misunderstanding of what a trade deficit is?

"A Chinese billionaire may have hidden 6% of the world's aluminum in the Mexican desert"- Business Insider That's just the tip of the iceburg, it's a common practice in China and anyone that's in the exporting business could tell you that in person, because the "great firewall" of China will censor such disclosures and their State contolled media will call such facts, "fake news". I'm going to give Mrs. Qiu as being blissfully oblivious of what's going on in China, her ancestral homeland, instead of her parroting Chinese communist party propaganda and talking points.

Much change is happening in the world of trade right now. The US, which restricted energy exports since '75, is now allowing exports. US oil exports have surpassed 1 million barrels per day and there will be major increases in other energy products such as LNG as the new export terminals are completed. The export rather than the import of energy products will have a profound effect on our trade balance. Many new domestic and foreign-owned chemical and industrial plants are under construction due to fracking's success in freeing up and reducing the price of natural gas. Our imports of plastic and chemicals will decline and our exports of these products will increase. Also, new automated machinery will be introduced into trades that at one time used manual labor. Two large companies, Nike and Reebok, have started to use robotic machines to manufacture sneakers. It may take some time till the machines prove themselves but eventually, they will. Fewer jobs will be available but the exports rather than imports of these shoes/sneakers will eventually improve our trade balance. As far as the automated bricklayer goes, there will be a reduction in jobs available but there will be fewer immigrants standing in line for those construction jobs that remain. It took us many years of outsourcing and energy imports to weaken our trade position. Five to ten years from now we should see a much-improved trade picture.

Granted we need to establish fair trade with all nations, not just China. But this constant China bashing and fear mongering is out of control. What's often neglected is the fact that China's trade surplus with the US means they need to continue to buy US debt, hence financing our out of control spending. The quality of life issues is not due to our trade inbalance, its due to our social economic divide...which the new Tax law exacerbates. We are a rich nation, but we choose to give corporations and the elite few more and more tax breaks, which reducing benefits for everyone else. Free trade is a good thing. Blaming China for our problems isn't the solution.

Trump lies as often as he breathes, that's the way he operates. He knows far more people will hear and believe his lies than will hear any correction or retraction. "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth gets its pants on." - Winston Churchill

Meanwhile Republicans are suing states that are passing point of origin labeling laws and passing legislation that impedes our ability to make informed choices regarding both goods and food!

Of course there's no support for his simple "solutions" that are often not attached to actual problems. Trump never moved beyond his snapshot view of the world that he took in the 80s, only now he frames it with conspiracy theories brought to us mostly via the NRA -- xenophobia, isolationism, fear of immigrants and minorities. He utterly lacks vision. Hopefully his reward for being lost in hindsight is NOT 2020.

Why address a problem until it's widespread? Hmmmm

There's little evidence in a lot of things President Trump says.

What US corporation will bring its operations in China back here? It is all about cheap labor and no concern for the environment. Steve Jobs loved slave labor and garnered billions.

“If the worst case scenario happens, we are read to take the U.S. to the WTO court, and we are discussing with other allies, other partners, to do it together.” -Jyrki Katainen, European Union vice president for jobs and competitiveness Rules based open trade is fantasy. WTO and softwood lumber laughable.

What fact check have you done? Fact is every product sold in this country is from China. They are dumping their overcapacity everywhere. We cant have zero manufacturing here and have 100% imports. Free trade is fine - if there is a some balance. what is happening in the name of free trade is a ripoff. Trump is right in this. importing is fine - but not at cost of total annihilation of the local industry. Every country protects itself so why not the US

The Chinese play fair, really? I spent 20 years in the technology, auto and information industries trying to do business in China. The Chinese only allow the US to have 50% of a JV, and hand over all IP. The Chinese "Police" randomly show up and take away servers. In the meantime, Chinese companies are coming into the US and going anything they want. I am the last person to support Trump, but when Liberals claim the Chinese play fair, it makes me want to run out and buy a red MAGA hat.

Trump's serial ignorance, stupidity and lies about Chinese trade is an ugly bigoted appeal to the 'yellow peril' American xenophobic past. America's withdrawal from the Trans Pacific Partnership promoted the interests of the Chinese Infrastructure Bank along with China's 'One Belt, One Road' transnational economic initiative.

trump giving misleading, erroneous or made up statements. what's next...dog bites man?

importing raw steel is different then importing finished steel products..anyone in the business could tell you that. different products have always been shipped at differing tariffs ..this seems to be lost to our fearless leader and the media

Regardless of the issue, we have a "President" who consistently puts his mouth into gear before engaging his brain, such as it is. I think that China has worked very hard to become a first-world economy through export, by any means necessary. However, China itself has realized over the last several years the this is not a sustainable strategy any longer and they have to develop growth from internal economic actions. Whether it has been dumping of excess production or intellectual property theft, we need to continue our actions to keep China as a fair train partner. However, Trump deciding to exit the TPP and mouth inaccurate and deceptive statements about China only weakens our hand in this regard, rather than improves our position. Apparently there are no adults in the current administration, at least any capable of corralling this "dotard."

Can someone at NYT analyze trade deficit with China. Does it include American companies manufacturing in China and importing back to US? Does it include full value of products assembled in China with the components imported from other countries and China adding only 5% to 10% value? My sense is that the deficit of $375B is overstated and don't necessarily include only the Chinese companies exporting to US? Apple has iphone assembled in at Foxxcon companybut the value added is only 5%. In trade it counts for total value of Iphone while China imports 95% components from other countries. Because there is so much noise about trade deficit with China and there is as much resentment as it was in 1980s against Japan, we need to have a realistic picture.

Over the course of my career in manufacturing, I heard many examples where China does not play by the rules when it comes to doing business. They steal intellectual property, hack our businesses, don't care about pollution or human rights, etc. I had a small CNC machine purchased on ebay delivered from China and all the paperwork indicated the transaction was for shoes to avoid import taxes. I reported all the details to the commerce department but never heard back, no doubt because it was too small a case. All of these things were addressed in the TPP which took a decade to negotiate only to be cancelled by a President who had no clue about its content or benefits. Although the TPP did not include China, had they wanted to join at some point, they would have to play by the same rules, on a level playing field. They cannot be trusted otherwise.

I did not vote for Mr. Trump however, the constant bashing if his admittedly unfinessed efforts to make fairer trade deals for America is becoming tiresome. The fact is, our trade and budget deficits are unsustainable. While the later will probably become worse under this President, trade does need to be addressed. Remember?.... Hillary was for the TPP until, she was against it. It remains to be seen if we can establish fairer trade with China, but, to put ones head in the sand (as this article does) will not solve the problem either. Cheap is not always cheap.

In 2014,15 China did indeed try to export its massive overproduction to the rest of the world, most likely below cost AKA dumping. Since then, there have been 94 "actions" by the US, the EU, even India. Subsequently, China got the message and has made half-hearted attempts to cut capacity (but not production). I don't know about transshipment but China did indeed try to "take over" the steel industry.